A mail order publisher named Sam Roth bought remainder copies
of
_Nightmare Alley_ about 1950. It seems that the book had been
on the list of the NY Vice Society or the National
Organization for Decent Lit., so he would have trouble
sending it through the mails.There are memos and a copy of
the Rhinehart ed. in Roth's files that suggest that he tried
to expurgate it. The only editions I know of (on WorldCat)
from the period are the Rhinehart in 1946 and the Sun Dial
Press in 1948
(both 275pp) , the Triangle Books (246pp, 1948), and the New
American Library, also 1948, 222pp.
Roth wrote a letter to the Post Office Examiner in 1951 or
1952, saying that the PO had given Rhinehart, or the famous
First Amendment law firm Greenbaum, Wolff and Ernst, a list
of words that had to be excised before the book could be sent
through the mails. Otherwise, despite positive reviews and
the book's selection by the Book of the Month Club, they
would not allow it to be mailed, for they had decided it was
"lewd, obscene, lascivious, and indecent." Roth knew of this
requirement, and was trying to get the PO to rescind it. Fat
chance.
If any edition was expurgated, "bankers that take it up the
ass" would be changed to "bankers with fishy eyes" (on p.168
of the Rhinehart ed.), and on p.14 the 2nd part of the 3rd
paragraph, describing Dad and the Lady "bounc[ing] up and
down on the bed" would probably have been excised.
Roth's advertising copy was to read: "a novel about the
circus and circus people who do all the things our primitive
instincts want us to do--to do which would be to break all
man-made laws--but which we do not have to do once we have
witnessed them done by others in a book." A bit wordy, but
clever not only as a titillating come-on but as a defense of
the book's effect on the general reader.
Has anyone seen any edition that seems to be
abridged?
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